After becoming a standalone company in 2017, Europe’s Polestar electric vehicle (EV) company has had Thomas Ingenlath at the helm. While Volvo had purchased it as a racing team endeavor, that hasn’t worked out, and they chose to shutter the company. Refusing to go down with the ship, Ingenlath secured an emergency $1 billion in funding, with 12 banks splitting the risk.
Despite being called the “Tesla of Europe” by their previous financial backers, Polestar has frequently posted significant losses, with $2.3 billion being lost between 2021 and 2022. A random interjection of support from celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio has been unsuccessful in getting people to support the brand or even EVs as a whole.
Speaking to the Telegraph, Ingenlath said he was shocked at people not jumping in with both feet. “To tell you the truth, I think that [it is about] being open for innovation and the future technology. I see far too many people hesitating with that and being scared of change. That is just not a good recipe for the future.”
From his perspective, the resistance to EVs is only making their inevitability more difficult to push through, and that is leaving Tesla and Rivian with no competition. With Apple announcing the end of their never-formally announced efforts to delve into EVs, the pool for competition just got significantly smaller.
As it is, Polestar has failed tremendously to be a real competitor. Despite being headquartered in Europe, their substandard vehicles are rarely seen on European streets and are even rarer in the US. Built in China, the cars are cheaply made and not designed to turn many heads beyond the first or second time you see them.
If Polestar is the “future” of EVs, I’ll gladly stay in the past and continue driving my dino-juice-powered truck.
